Complex telecommunication devices and systems typically have thousands of telecommunication channels. The telecommunication channels may encapsulate other channel types and protocols. Such telecommunication devices and systems are configurable to support a network topology. The network topology is used to program, operate, and test the telecommunication devices and systems. The network topology is a hierarchical map of entities and their connections, including restrictions and limitations on possible connections, capable of dealing with multiple communications hierarchical protocol and channel types.
Conventional methods of determining, representing, and applying such configurations involve describing and programming thousands of registers. The entire system must be described at a very detailed level. This task of determining a topology-explicit description of a complex communication device, together with the generation of multiple outputs of this description, is labor intensive and, as such, is prone to error. As the telecommunications devices and system become more complex, the ability to determine a topology is increasingly problematic.